It’s not uncommon for people to begin considering cosmetic surgery as they enter middle age. The same is true of your cosmetic surgery website. If your website has been in service for several years, it probably lacks many of the most important elements of modern web design. It may even drive potential new clients away. It’s time for your website to receive a facelift.
How can you tell whether your cosmetic surgery website needs a new design — and if it’s time for a redesign, what are some of the elements that your website needs? We’ll explain it all — but first, let’s learn a bit about why cosmetic surgery website design is so important.
Why Does Cosmetic Surgery Website Design Matter?
The design of a cosmetic surgery website is vital because cosmetic surgery is a field of medicine that focuses primarily on aesthetics. Any medical website should project an image of confidence and trustworthiness — but a cosmetic surgery website should also illustrate that you have an eye for beauty. After all, obtaining and preserving beauty are the two most common reasons why a patient begins seeing a cosmetic surgeon.
Like fashion trends, the elements of web design that people consider appealing have changed with time. In the early days of the web, it was common to see websites with elements such as visitor counters and scrolling text. In the late 2000s, websites began to add flashy design features such as glossy buttons and drop shadows to give on-page elements a three-dimensional appearance. If your cosmetic surgery website has those or other hallmarks of outdated web design trends, many of your potential clients may see your practice as outdated or behind the times.
Key Takeaway: Your cosmetic surgery website reflects your perception of aesthetics. Is your website outdated? Potential clients might conclude that your practice is also outdated.
What Are the Key Elements of a Good Cosmetic Surgery Website Design?
If glossy icons and the Comic Sans font are two hallmarks of a website from a decade ago, what are the design elements that people expect to see in a modern cosmetic surgery website? There are three key elements that every cosmetic surgery website requires. They are:
- Mobile Friendliness
- A Blog
- Before-and-After Photos
Let’s go over those elements in greater detail.
Mobile Friendliness
In modern website design, there is absolutely nothing more important than supporting all of the different devices that people will use to view your website. You can test the mobile friendliness of your current cosmetic surgery website by viewing it with a mobile phone. Does the page fill the phone’s screen, or do you need to pinch to view the entire page? When you pinch the screen, do some elements of the page become too small to read or tap? If the page doesn’t fill the screen — and links are too small to tap accurately — your website isn’t mobile friendly. Smartphones and tablets now generate more than half of all web traffic. If your website doesn’t look good on mobile devices, you will lose potential clients.
A Blog
Google indexes text to determine the content of websites. If someone searches for a particular topic online — and your website has a page about that topic — your page may appear among the search results. Your website has no chance of appearing on a search results page, though, if it has no content relating to the search. It stands to reason, then, that your website may appear on a greater variety of search results pages if it contains plenty of content about many different topics. In that sense, creating content is actually a form of marketing. If a page from your website appears in Google’s search results, it’s like an advertisement for your cosmetic surgery practice. When someone clicks that result and reads your article, she isn’t just learning about a topic — she is also learning to trust your expertise.
Content has great power on the web. It increases your website’s traffic by giving search engines keywords to index, and it positions you as an authority in your field to help convert visitors into new clients. A blog is the best way to keep all of your website’s content organized.
Before-and-After Photos
Every person who undergoes cosmetic surgery has unique goals. If a potential client is serious about having cosmetic work performed, she will want to see examples of your previous work. The before-and-after section of your cosmetic surgery website is something like an artist’s portfolio; it illustrates your techniques and demonstrates your ability to achieve successful results with a wide variety of face and body types.
It’s wise to publish as many before-and-after photos as possible on your website. Organize the photos according to the different types of procedures that they illustrate. If you already have a section on your website for before-and-after photos, examine the photos to confirm that they look good on all devices and demonstrate your current techniques adequately. Consider improving the quality of future photos by investing in a good camera and lighting system.
Key Takeaway: A modern cosmetic surgery website should look great on any device. It should have a blog section with plenty of informative content, and it should have a section that allows people to see examples of your work.
How Can I Tell Which Areas of My Cosmetic Surgery Website Need Improvement?
Once you’ve moved past the basic visual appearance of your cosmetic surgery website, it’s time to critique the finer elements of the user experience. To do that, you need to know more about the experiences that your potential clients have when they visit your website. If you don’t already have an analytics solution such as Google Analytics, you need to begin using one. Website analytics can tell you how people find your website, what pages they view, how long they spend on your website and much more.
What Website Analytics Can Tell You
Although analytics can answer virtually any question that you might have about your website’s performance, many of the features of an analytics package might be difficult to understand if you aren’t an experienced website designer. There are, however, two key statistics that you can understand without any technical expertise:
Average Time on Site: This statistic tells you how long people typically remain on your website before they leave.
Bounce Rate: This statistic tells you the percentage of website visitors who leave after viewing only one page.
How Analytics Can Help You Improve the Design of Your Cosmetic Surgery Website
If your cosmetic surgery website has a low bounce rate — and visitors spend plenty of time on the site before leaving — then your website is already doing an excellent job of converting visitors into new clients. If those statistics are poor, you can improve the user experience by examining these three elements of your website’s design:
- Site Navigation
- Text Layout
- Content Relevance
Let’s learn more about how those three elements can affect the user experience.
Site Navigation
If people can’t find the information that they want on a website, they will quickly leave. Does your cosmetic surgery website have an intuitive menu at the top of every page, or are the navigation links hard to find? Does your website have so many links that visitors aren’t sure what to choose? If people don’t know what to click when they visit your website, many will end up clicking nothing at all. Simplify your website’s navigation structure. Remove anything unnecessary to make the next choice as obvious as possible.
Text Layout
When you find a lengthy article online, are you likely to read all of it — or will you simply skim it to find the information most relevant to you? No matter how good your website’s content is, you’ll only have a few moments to capture and retain the attention of your potential clients. Optimize your content for quick scanning by using subheadings, bullet lists and images to break up large blocks of text.
Content Relevance
If your cosmetic surgery practice has been in operation for a long time, it’s likely that your website has a great deal of old content that may still generate traffic. Does your website’s older content still provide relevant information, or is it outdated? If people see irrelevant content when they visit your website, they won’t investigate further to find the content they want — they’ll leave. Take the time to update your old content and ensure that it still provides value.
Key Takeaway: The way in which your website works is just as important as its appearance. Don’t ever neglect the user experience.
Contact Us Now for Help With Your Cosmetic Surgery Website
As a cosmetic surgeon, you spend most of your time with your patients — not tinkering with your website. If your website needs a facelift, we can help. Contact Crystal Clear Digital Marketing now to learn more about our cosmetic surgery website design services.
